“Hooray!” cried Peanut. “I got two packs of firecrackers in my kettle!”
“How high is it?” asked Frank.
“About 4,200 feet,” Mr. Rogers answered. “That’s only 700 feet higher than Greylock, but I can promise you it will seem more, and there’ll be a different view.”
Peanut was running from one side of the car to the other, trying to see everything. But the nearer they got to the mountains, the less of the mountains they saw. After the train turned up the narrow valley of the Ammonoosuc, at Woodsville, in fact, they saw no more mountains at all. An hour later they got off the train at the Sugar Hill station. So did a great many other people. There were many motors and mountain wagons waiting to carry off the new arrivals. The boys, at Art’s suggestion, let these get out of the way before they started, so the dust would have a chance to settle. It was late in the afternoon when they finally set out.
“How far have we got to go?” asked Frank.
“Seven or eight miles,” Mr. Rogers answered, “if we want to camp at the base of Kinsman. If you’d rather walk it in the morning, we can camp along this road.”
“No, let’s get there to-night! Don’t care if I starve, I’m going to keep on till I see the mountains,” cried Peanut.
The rest were equally eager, so up the road they plodded, a road which mounted steadily through second growth timber, mile after mile, with scarce a house on it. After an hour or more, they came in sight of Sugar Hill village, one street of houses straggling up a hill ahead. They increased their pace, and soon Peanut, who was leading, gave a cry which startled several people walking on the sidewalk. The rest hurried up. Peanut had come to the top of the road, and was looking off eastward excitedly. There were the mountains! Near at hand, hardly a stone’s throw, it seemed, across the valley below, lay a long, forest-clad bulwark, rising into domes. Beyond that shot up a larger rampart, sharply peaked, of naked rock. Off to the left, beyond that, growing bluer and bluer into the distance, was a billowing sea of mountains, and very far off, to the northwest, almost like a mist on the horizon, lay the biggest pyramid of all, which Mr. Rogers told them was Mount Washington.
“Some mountains, those!” Peanut exclaimed. “Gee, I guess we won’t climb ’em all in two weeks!”
“I guess not,” Rob laughed.